Want You Dead (6 page)

She and her mother had fallen out big time over Bryce, and later he had blamed her parents for being behind their break-up.

It wasn’t until her mother had showed her the evidence that she had finally been forced to realize the truth. That everything about Bryce was a lie.

She had been a lot more careful with Karl, surreptitiously checking out his background – which had made her feel sneaky, but safe.

‘Now, this is a really nice size spare bedroom – with its own en suite bathroom,’ she said, saving the stunning master bedroom – one of the property’s best selling points – until last. She held the door open.

‘Yes!’ Mrs Hovey said.

‘Your parents would be happy with this room when they come to stay,’ her husband said.

Promising
, Red thought.

Then she led them across the landing to the pièce de résistance. She opened the master bedroom door, waited until they had entered and were absorbed in looking around, then tapped the Sky News app on her phone, hoping desperately, forlornly, for some news of Karl.

‘Wow!’ Mrs Hovey said. ‘You’re right, this is a stunning room!’

‘The bathroom’s a bit disappointing,’ her husband said.

‘We could change it, darling. It’s a fabulous bedroom!’

Red wasn’t listening. She was staring at the news. Unable to take her eyes off the screen.

15

Thursday, late afternoon, 24 October

The charred body lying in the ditch at Haywards Heath Golf Club looked even more eerie under the glare of the spotlights, if that were possible, thought Glenn Branson. He was standing with DS Bella Moy, who Roy Grace had dispatched from the Major Crime Team to join him. Both of them were feeling cold in the chilly autumnal air behind the screens that had been erected to enable the Home Office Pathologist, Dr Frazer Theobald, who was conveniently in the area for another postmortem, to view the body in situ. Although it looked very much like suicide, foul play had to be ruled out.

A little earlier, he’d had to deal with an irate Club Secretary, James Birkett, who felt the police were being over the top in closing down the entire golf club, and demanded to know when his members could resume playing. He had been extremely unhappy when Glenn had told him, apologetically, that it would depend on whether or not the pathologist was satisfied there was no foul play. If he was not satisfied, it meant it could be several days before this part of the golf course at least could reopen.

In an attempt to mollify him, and masking his irritation, Glenn Branson had asked the Secretary how he would feel if this man was a member of his family – would he not want the police to do everything possible to find the perpetrator, and not take the risk of golfers trampling a vital piece of evidence into the ground?

Under the harsh lights the corpse seemed even more like a prop from a horror movie, and despite all his experience, Glenn found himself having to remember that this was a human being, someone’s son, and, more than likely, someone’s loved one. As the pathologist worked his painstakingly thorough, methodical, slow way around the body, Glenn tentatively put an arm around Bella’s shoulder. You had to be so careful in the police in this new politically correct age. One false move and you could find yourself up on a disciplinary charge of sexual harassment.

He fancied Bella like hell. Although his wife, Ari, had died only a couple of months ago, they had been living apart for over a year and before her sudden death, following a bicycle accident, she had started divorce proceedings. Even beneath the blue hood of her crime scene protective oversuit, Bella looked attractive. In her mid-thirties, she was not conventionally beautiful, but she had something about her face, and a good figure, and Glenn believed that if she would allow him to organize a total makeover – as he had once done with Roy Grace – she would really blossom.

There was one fly in the ointment, however. It seemed that at the moment she was dating one of his colleagues, Detective Sergeant Norman Potting. It was hard to understand what she could see in a four-times divorced, shabby, balding, pipe-smoking male chauvinist in his mid-fifties, and Glenn was determined to make a play for her. He felt her respond, a little, to the pressure from his right arm, and she moved closer, snuggling against him.

‘I am soooooo cold!’ she said. ‘And starving.’

‘Can’t offer you any pork scratchings, I’m afraid.’

She shuddered. ‘Yech! Thanks, Glenn.’

Suddenly her phone rang. She answered and Glenn strained to hear the voice of the caller, but was unable to. As Bella stepped away her whole demeanour changed. Her face was alive, animated. ‘I’m just attending a rural suicide with Glenn. Call you later, depending on what time we get finished?’

Glenn watched the pathologist take a ruler measurement on the upper part of the victim’s right leg. It never ceased to amaze him quite how different all the pathologists he worked with were. Short, tubby and jolly. Slender and beautiful. Tall and cynical. Wiry and deadly serious. This particular one, Dr Frazer Theobald, was a short, stockily built man in his mid-fifties, with beady nut-brown eyes; he sported a thick Adolf Hitler style moustache beneath a massive hooter of a nose and an untidy, threadbare thatch of wiry hair on his head. It was Roy Grace who had first mentioned it, and he totally agreed: Theobald would not have needed much more than a large cigar in his mouth, to have gone to a fancy dress party as a passable Groucho Marx.

After Bella had hung up, Glenn gave her a quizzical look, but she deliberately avoided eye contact. ‘Glenn,’ she said, ‘if you need to go home, don’t worry – I can stay on.’

‘I’m okay,’ he said.

‘What about your kids?’

‘Ari’s sister is babysitting. They adore her, it’s all cool.’

Then she looked at him tenderly. ‘And you’re okay, are you? It must have been terrible for you – your wife—’

She was interrupted by his phone ringing.

‘Glenn Branson,’ he answered.

It was quiet, methodical Ray Packham from the High Tech Crime Unit, who had stayed late in his office, with another colleague, to work on the charred phone that had been recovered from the victim.

‘We’ve got lucky, Glenn,’ he said, ‘with the phone. If it had been an iPhone, which are encrypted, we’d have been stuffed. But this one’s a Galaxy S11, and we’re able to read the chip off the main board. We’re still working on it, but I thought it might be helpful to you to know that someone has called this number several times in the past twenty-four hours.’

‘Do you have the caller’s number?’

Sounding very pleased with himself, Packham said, ‘I do!’

16

Thursday evening, 24 October

There was a cool blast of air in the downstairs room of Cleo’s townhouse, where Roy Grace sat around the makeshift card table with his poker buddies. Like some of the others, he had a cigar smouldering in the ashtray beside him. He checked the two cards in front of him – an ace of diamonds and a nine of clubs – as Sean Mcdonald, a recently retired Public Order Specialist Constable, dealt the flop.

The queen of hearts, ace of clubs and nine of spades.

Two pairs, aces on nines. This was potentially a good hand.

A pile of gambling chips lay in the centre of the table. Alongside each of the six players were tumblers of whisky or glasses of wine, piles of cash and chips, and a couple of overflowing ashtrays surrounded by fragments of crisps and nuts. There was a fug of smoke in the room which the draught from the open window was helping to clear. Cleo was upstairs, working on her Open University philosophy degree, with Noah asleep, his door shut against the cigar fumes, up in his bedroom.

Grace stared ruefully at his diminished pile of chips. He was too distracted to focus tonight. But with a hand like this he had to play. He tentatively put down two one-pound chips.

Bob Thornton, to his left, a long-time retired DI in his mid-seventies, was by a wide margin the oldest of the group of regular players. They took it in turns to host an evening every Thursday, week in week out, year in year out.

The game had been going on long before Grace had joined the force. Bob was a frequent winner and, true to form, there was a mountain of chips and cash in front of the man right now.

Grace watched Bob hunch his shoulders as he checked his two hole cards, keeping them close to his chest, peering at them through his glasses with alert, greedy eyes. He opened and shut his mouth, flicking his tongue along his lips in a serpent-like manner. Grace, who reckoned he could read the man’s body language, knew immediately he didn’t have to worry about Bob’s hand – unless he got lucky on either of the next two cards, the turn and the river.

But to his surprise, Bob Thornton matched his two pounds and raised him three. Grace eyed the rest of his companions. Gary Bleasdale, wearing a sweatshirt over a T-shirt, was a thirty-four-year-old detective in Brighton CID; he had a serious, narrow face beneath short curly hair; he was peering at his cards impassively.

Next to Gary sat Chris Croke, a motorcycle cop in the Road Policing Unit. With lean and wiry good looks, short blond hair, blue eyes and a quick-fire charm, Croke was a consummate ladies’ man, who, thanks to having married a wealthy woman, seemed to live the lifestyle more of a playboy than that of a cop. He was a reckless and unpredictable gambler, and in seven years of playing with him, Grace found his body language hard to decipher. He never seemed to care whether he won or lost; it was much easier to read people who had something at stake. Croke now doubled the ante by raising a full five pounds.

Grace turned his focus on Frank Newton, a quiet, balding man who worked in IT at Brighton police station. He rarely bluffed, rarely raised, and as a result rarely finished any evening up. Newton’s giveaway was a nervous twitch of his right eye – the sure-fire signal that he had a strong hand. It was twitching now. But then, suddenly, he shook his head. ‘I’m out.’

It was back round to Grace. He either had to raise his bet or drop out. He had two pairs and there were two more cards to come. No other aces or nines were showing. He tossed in a further eight pounds.

Then his mind went back to the suicide note which he had photographed on his phone and now knew by heart. And could not stop thinking about. He’d dealt with his share of suicides over the years, as well as two homicides in the past that had been set up to look like suicides. The pattern for every suicide was different, and who the hell knew what truly went on in the mind of someone about to take that terrible step?

From the little he knew about the victim so far, he was a well-liked and respected family GP. Dr Karl Murphy had gone to play in a golf tournament, and had played well. His sister had collected his two small sons from school, and had been waiting for her brother to return. He had confided to her that he had a date that night and was excited – and had a babysitter arranged.

The mindset of someone on the verge of suicide?

Another card had appeared face up on the table. The three of clubs. No sodding use at all to him, he thought. He looked again at the four cards on the table. With his hidden ace and hidden nine he was still in reasonable shape. There was a total bag of nails in terms of numbers and suits on the table. So it was unlikely anyone was holding a run or a flush in their hand. He pushed a five-pound chip forward, then, as he sank back into his thoughts, his phone rang.

Looking at the display, he saw it was Glenn Branson.

Stepping away apologetically from the table, he answered it.

‘ Sorry to wake you up, old timer.’

‘Very witty!’

‘Our suicide victim at Haywards Heath, yeah?’

‘Tell me.’

‘Frazer Theobald can’t confirm it’s suicide, at this stage, but he’ll know more tomorrow after the post-mortem.’

‘Is he suspicious?’

‘No. But he needs to do a post-mortem before he can be certain.’

‘Okay. Where are you? Still on the golf course?’

‘I’ve been working on my handicap.’

‘Haha!’

‘Yeah, too fucking funny. It’s bloody brass monkeys out here.’

‘Roy!’ someone called out. ‘Are you in?’

Grace ended the call and returned to the table, and saw the final card, the river, was lying face up. It was the nine of hearts.

And suddenly his adrenaline was surging. With his concealed ace and nine he now had a full house. Nines on aces. He looked at the five open cards carefully, thinking hard. There was virtually nothing that could beat him, from what was showing. The only possible higher full house was if someone had two aces as their hole cards. He looked at his fellow players, then raised the bet to ten pounds.

Bob Thornton, tongue flicking again, raised to thirty pounds. Everyone else folded.

Grace studied the old detective for some moments. He was bluffing, he was sure. He matched his bet and raised him by a further thirty pounds.

Thornton moved a further thirty pounds of chips forward. ‘See you,’ he said.

Grace flipped up his two hole cards triumphantly.

But his triumph was short-lived.

Thornton flipped his cards to reveal a pair of queens. ‘Full house,’ he said. ‘Queens on nines.’

Grace grimaced as Thornton scooped the pot over towards his already massive pile of chips.

Thornton grinned at him, then flicked his tongue mischievously.

Bastard!
Grace thought, realizing he had been outsmarted. The canny sod had realized, somehow, that Roy had picked up on his little giveaway and had just now used it against him.

At that moment Cleo appeared. ‘Supper’s ready! How’s everyone doing?’

17

Thursday evening, 24 October

Red sat in front of her television with a glass of wine in her hand, mesmerized by the images of the blazing restaurant, Cuba Libre, on the edge of Brighton’s Lanes.

And deeply dismayed.

It was her favourite restaurant in the city, and it was where, in happier times, Bryce had taken her on their first date. It had a big, airy interior, with a great bar, comfortable sofas and a terrific menu. Karl, by coincidence, had also taken her there on their first solo date.